Commission wants info on Lanza's mental health

Published 3:30 pm, Friday, December 20, 2013

The commission plans to pursue legal remedies to obtain more medical records than have been released in the year since the troubled 20-year-old murdered his mother, 20 first graders and six adults in the Newtown School.

Hamden Mayor Scott Jackson, who is chairman of the advisory panel, said Friday the group needs large amounts of information on Lanza's records, some of which are being withheld because of confidentiality protections for the murderer, who ended his shooting spree in suicide.

"I'm trying to get more answers on Adam Lanza's mental health," Jackson told the commission, which is preparing recommendations for the governor. He expects a report from the state Child Advocate sometime next month that could be helpful.

But he also supported the possibility of contacting Peter Lanza, the shooter's father, to gain more of an insight and to possibly seek permission as a family survivor, to release information that might be encumbered in physician offices.

"I am distressed about the amount of mental-health issues that are not present in Mr. Sedensky's report," Schwartz said. "I understand some information is confidential. This is not a routine situation. The `why' question is absolutely unknowable. I do believe every incremental piece of information is important."

"We need Adam Lanza's story," agreed Dr. Adrienne L. Bentman, director of the adult residential program at the Institute for Living. "I bet there are a boat-load of reports out there."

The commission also heard from representatives of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association, who quoted their recent report that said Newtown Police arrived at Sandy Hook Elementary School in a prompt, timely manner that hastened Lanza's suicide.

Two leaders of the organization admitted that police hesitated upon their arrival at the school on Dec.14, 2012 while assessing the scene, before the first cops entered through an unlocked door to the boiler room at the back of the building.

They said that response tactics have evolved in recent years and law-enforcement officers are now trained to go into a facility and confront a shooter immediately. The Sandy Hook response was complicated by the appearance of a parent running outside the building, briefly confusing police, who were otherwise focused, supervised appropriately and tactically prepared for a serious crime, they said.

South Windsor Police Chief Matthew Reed said the response was "wholly appropriate," with the first police officer getting to the school 2 minutes and 41 seconds after the first emergency call. But they waited 5 minutes and 57 seconds more before entering the facility, where Lanza shot himself in the head after killing 20 first graders and six adults.

"It is important to keep their response in perspective," Reed told the commission. "That is, to understand that the officers responding and arriving at the scene in those first few minutes did not have the benefit of knowing what we all know today. They did not know what exactly was going on inside that building."

Reed noted that the two teams of police entered the school "within a minute or two" of each other, but were unaware of each other's presence and location.

"Who would have ever thought that this was going to happen in Newtown, Connecticut?" Reed said, noting that the parent, who was talking on a mobile phone while running around the outside the building, complicated the response.

"While entry into the building to stop the shooting is the primary object in response to an active-shooter event, officers must remain fully aware of their environment," Reed said. "Their attention was immediately drawn to a person moving along the outside of the building and they focused on stopping this person. At the same time dispatch radioed that they received a report from a teacher inside the building that two figures could be seen running along outside the school toward the rear of the school. Officers initially focused on this threat. They located a man outside the building and they detained him."

Manchester Police Chief Marc L. Montminy said a 70-second period between the entrance of police into the school and Lanza's suicide was "a tall order" for responding officers as the shooter finished his killing.

The remarks summarized a report by the association that was announced on December 5, the day after the release of a long-delayed summary of the shootings released by Sedensky.

The chiefs association was asked by Newtown Police Chief Michael Kehoe to conduct a peer review of the response to the shooting and a group of chiefs from outside Fairfield County reviewed 911 recordings, written statements, recordings of communications among responding police.